"They all took turns in me."
Pizza shop worker Ricardo Audish has been convicted following his involvement in the gang rape of an 18-year-old woman who had been drugged.
Prosecutor Kate Nightingale said the 42-year-old from Sydney, Australia, showed no remorse.
She added that Audish’s moral culpability was not reduced by any mental health condition alleged by the defence.
At NSW District Court, Audish was found guilty of three counts of aggravated sexual assault in company.
After the jury left the courtroom, Audish shouted there was “no evidence” and the police “tried to hide the whole truth”.
He also labelled the victim a “prostitute” and verbally abused the prosecutors of his case.
The victim had been raped at a pizza restaurant in Lugarno in October 2016.
Earlier that evening, she had consensual sex with her boyfriend in a toilet cubicle. He then told her “all the other boys want to have sex with you now”, to which she replied “hell no”.
As she was pulling up her underwear another male entered and offered her a bong with cannabis, which she smoked twice, and which was suspected of having been spiked.
Ms Nightingale explained that the incident had been a joint criminal enterprise that involved providing the woman with a substance to override her refusal.
CCTV footage showed her “sure-footed” walking and sometimes jogging upstairs before the incident.
This was compared to afterwards where she is seen walking slowly, stumbling and leaning on a pole for 17 minutes to regain balance.
The victim was raped by Audish and two others, aged 17 and 15.
Audish was the first to sexually assault the woman, while he was present for the other two acts.
The other two males and the victim’s boyfriend pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial.
Later, a passer-by found the woman on a road crying, shaking and disorientated, and called emergency services.
She later said: “They all took turns in me.”
After the woman spoke to police, an intercepted phone call revealed that Audish demanded to know what the police had told police “so we know what we are going to say”.
Ms Nightingale described the victim as so intoxicated she was “unable to stand up properly” before she was assaulted.
She also revealed that the ordeal lasted “at least about an hour”.
Ms Nightingale said that a large part of Audish’s rehabilitation prospects involved remorse “of which he has shown none at all”.
Greg James QC, defending, said his client was not the “promoter or originator” of the gang rape, but said it had been “opportunistic”.
The pizza shop worker will be sentenced on August 27, 2021.
Loading ...